From the Curragh to Hong Kong- Kildare jockey Neil Callan's incredible story

Shortly after picking up the phone, Neil Callan says ‘Gong hei fat choy’, the common Cantonese greeting for wishing someone a Happy New Year. Friday February 16 was the first day of the Chinese Lunar Year, and Callan was celebrating it in Hong Kong once again. There are plenty of aspects of life that Callan can celebrate other than the start of another new year over in the Far East – he recently racked up his 200^th career win in Hong Kong, and his family have settled in nicely to life in the vast Chinese city since they made the permanent move at the beginning of the 2014/15 season out there. “Yeah that was good,” Callan told KildareNow with quaint modesty of his most recent milestone. “It’s not something that I was aiming to do, but I was made aware of it when I was getting close to it. I’m not really one who sets goals or milestones – I just go with the flow and try and win every race I can, and obviously to try and ride in all the big races, which is the most important thing. “We’ve had a good few seasons.” It hardly made any reverberations in Ireland due to the Kildare man’s 20 years spent developing his career outside of this island. But Callan is a famous figure in his adopted city, where horse racing is much more prominent than many would expect. Huge crowds arrive into arenas of Sha Tin every Sunday and Happy Valley every Wednesday for the weekly meetings at each track, and Callan’s success means that he is a major sporting figure out there. For instance, Callan has a massive Twitter following of more than 93,000 people, more than the combined figures of Davy Russell and Paul Townend, Ireland’s two leading jockeys at present. He is almost an entrepreneur in his own right, having developed and enhanced his profile, constant self-promotion and ensuring that he remains a success on the track. “I have to manage myself; I have to book my own rides, manage my own PR,” explains Callan. “The harder you’re working and the better you do, the more you’re going to pick up. You can ride for anybody, and I try to keep all the windows open.” His Twitter and facebook accounts are a hive of activity – most of which is related to horse racing, some of it to prominent worldwide affairs and a lot of it devoted to his beloved Liverpool. “I’ve been like that all my life. I don’t change with the wind – when someone wins a trophy I don’t jump ship, so I stick my name to the post; I’m a Liverpool fan always will be.” Rewind a few years and Callan had a choice to make. The first major step of his career came in 1998 when he moved to England to pursue his racing career having previously rode for Curragh trainer Kevin Prendergast as an apprentice jockey. Teaming up with trainers Karl Burke, Kevin Ryan and Michael Jarvis, Callan became a success on the English circuit, being crowned Champion Apprentice Jockey in 1999 and going on to finish as a runner up in the Jockeys’ Championship in 2005 and 2007. In 2011 Callan got a call to go to Hong Kong upon invitation to race in the Jockeys’ Challenge, a major race which features jockeys from around the world. He liked the environment, and he then rode in the Chinese city during the off season for a few seasons before making the move permanent for the 2014/15 campaign. “Back a while there they invited me for the Jockeys’ Challenge on a Wednesday,” he explained. “I’d been riding in England and had been watching many of the jockeys put here like Mick Cunnane, Pat Smullen and Johnny Murtagh. So I obviously followed it from there. You’re taken in by it straight away because it’s like 10 levels up in the competitiveness, the infatuation of the people. I think that kind of just caught me and gave me an appetite of wanting to change, having been in England for 20 years.” “They’re very passionate. On the big days here you’d have 90,000 or 100,000 people here. The weekly meetings you would get a healthy crowd as well. The turnover is quite big, so the prize money is big, and it seems to be growing every year.” Such big crowds are not the norm in Ireland and the UK, save for a few major days on the flat racing circuit. The fans in China are passionate about their racing, and jockeys are treated like heroes over there. Callan has had his fair share of success on the big days on the Hong Kong racing calendar, winning notable races such as the Champions & Chater Cup in 2014 and 2016, along with the APQEII Cup in 2015 on Blazing Speed, and the Centenary Sprint with Peniaphobia in 2017. His recollections of such big occasions are somewhat hazy, mainly due to the focus he puts in to every race. The size of the crowds don’t daunt him, and he only ever gets the chance to take it all in when he comes back as a winner to the parade ring. “It’s quite funny because when you ride in those big races you’re so focused on your racing and all that’s in front of you. You don’t really hear that until you finish the race, which sounds quite strange to say when you’re riding on front of 100,000 people, but it is very much like that. You’re just so focused on what you’re doing in your race that you don’t hear it. Obviously if you win a big race you come back on front of the crowd to parade… it’s pretty big.” Aside from the success in the saddle, the Callan family’s successful integration into life in Hong Kong has been the most worthwhile aspect of the incredible journey for the 39-year-old jockey. Callan insists that he would never had made the move if he thought that it wouldn’t be of benefit for his wife Trish and his three young sons. He describes that as his ‘main priority’, and the lifestyle has suited them down to the ground. Even his eldest son, Jack, has picked up on some of the local lingo quite well, learning the Cantonese language which is spoken predominantly in the region. “They’ve settled in quite well. Obviously you come here and the prize money is good, the racing is good. If you do well it’s pretty good. My main priority when I was coming here is that my family would have to come first, because otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I couldn’t live the other side of the world and have my family the other side of the world. They’ve settled in well; they go to a nice school – it’s quite cosmopolitan. They meet plenty of people here and they’ve got a lot of friends. “My eldest son, Jack, he’s pretty clued up and he can write it. He can do it to a level and he’s progressing quite nicely. It’s a handy thing to have for him. I know a few of the little words and stuff, but Cantonese is the main language spoke in Hong Kong. I can pick certain things up and understand when someone is talking in a conversation from little bits, but I wouldn’t really get into much dialogue with it now.” Life is good for the former Champion Apprentice jockey in Hong Kong, and Callan’s noteworthy prize winnings means that there is no need to return to Ireland just yet. He has no intention of coming back from the Far East at this moment, insisting that everything will be taken on a year by year basis. “At the moment, I mean the outlook is the same outlook as when I came here. I’d take it step by step and see how it went and take it year by year. If I do well and I get plenty of support I’ll stay, and if my family are happy to be here then I’ll stay. If tomorrow something changes I have to re-evaluate, but the main for me – touch wood – is that my family are happy, they’re healthy. We’re all good. As long as that carries on, I don’t see a reason not to stay. It’s a good lifestyle,” he concludes. Callan’s most recent win in Hong Kong came in Sha Tin on Sunday February 18 when he captured the Class 4 Lucky Star Handicap with Speedy King, while four days previous he won the Class 3 Daffodil Handicap with Jolly Convergence, a top rated race which had a prize fund of $1.3 HKD (€135,000). Success is hard to come by when travelling across the world to race in a completely different atmosphere, but Callan has proved more adept than most at achieving it.